Headspace is a horror film with a Lovecraftian theme about
monsters from another dimension who find a portal into our plane
of existence through the brains of certain humans.

Damn those monsters from another dimension, sneaking across the
borders and taking jobs away from our American monsters. Oh, sure
there are those who say that these monsters only deliver the
low-level scares that no self-respecting American monster like
Jason or Freddy would touch, but I say that they are a drain on
our social services. When is our congress finally going to seal
off the dimensional portals and bring those jobs home? And where
are these immigrants mentioned on the Statue of Liberty? We want
the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and we will
even take the tired, although they are often cranky from lack of
sleep, but there is nothing in that poem about the terrifying.

The film begins with some sleight-of-hand that asks the viewer
to look in one direction while it is setting up an illusion
elsewhere. A young slacker meets a speed-chess master in the park,
and their physical contact, a simple handshake, triggers some
inexplicable changes in the youth. He suddenly experiences some
exponential growth in the powers of his intellect. He is able to
memorize entire books in seconds. He is able to answer questions
before they have been asked. Soon he is even answering questions
that cannot be answered, like why innocent children have to suffer
and why the Swiss wear such tiny hats. He is even able to defeat the
mysterious chess master. Unfortunately for him, his mental expansion comes at the cost of
powerful headaches and terrifying dreams.

What does all this have to do with monsters from another
dimension? There is only a faint connection, although it will get
stronger as the film develops. The enigmatic chess master seems to
be one of those humans who can act as a portal. Sorta. When he's
not playing chess, he is a painter, and his paintings ... well, we are led to believe that chess guy uses his
imagination to create paintings of terrifying abominations, but it
turns out that he's a photorealist!

Cue up Twilight Zone theme.

(This part of the concept is borrowed directly from a Lovecraft
story called
Pickman's Model.)

Anyway, slacker guy gradually comes to the realization that
there is a connection between his recent mental growth and some
bizarre murders which are taking place around town, and that
everything is connected to his own childhood, the death of his
mother, and a unknown link between him and chess guy. When all of
those things are added together, the answer is ... you guessed it
... monsters from another dimension.

While the director is performing sleight-of-hand with the plot,
he also has some tricks up his sleeve with the casting. I thought
it was clever. All the main parts in this film are taken by
unknowns, but there are several cameos and bit parts filled in by
well-known actors like Sean Young, William Atherton, Dee Wallace,
Udo Kier, Larry Fessenden, and Olivia Hussey. The cool thing about
that is that their presence in the movie leads us to think that
their characters will be critical to the plot - until they are
devoured or forgotten after delivering one or two lines. In
essence, the director has sent a landing party down from the
Enterprise in which only the anonymous red-shirted guys will
return, while all the familiar faces will die horrible deaths on
the lonely alien planet.

Although it received a theatrical run that consisted of one
screen in New York for four days (specifically, TriBeCa Cinemas,
54 Varick Street, from February 17-20, 2006.), Headspace is a
slick little movie which delivers a pretty good punch out of a
minimal budget. The film looks good, has some interesting
performances from the leads, and has some good scares. You have to
be impressed by the fact that the director was only 25 years old
at the time he made this, and had never directed a full-length
film before. The kid has some talent.

This film picked up some decent notices from both mainstream
and genre critics:

On the mainstream side, the N.Y. Times
wrote:

"It has all the necessary gore and
beasties and gratuitous nudity that this not-very-demanding
genre demands .... William M. Miller's cinematography and those
big-name cameos keep it interesting."

Hollywood Reporter commented:

"Van den Houten displays a strong
ability for creating an air of atmospheric tension, and the film
also looks uncommonly terrific, thanks to
cinematographer/producer/co-screenwriter William M. Miller's
expert lensing."

On the genre side, Joe Horror wrote:

"Overall, van den Houten
has succeeded in making a damned fine indie horror film. Higher
than usual production values really give Headspace an
edge over most of its competition. The film looks good, sounds
good and is good. Itís horror for the thinking person."

I was pretty much on the
same page as those critics. The film has a lot of good touches and
some solid pacing. What I like most about it is that it is
completely fearless about challenging our conceptions about what
should be in a horror film. That is very refreshing in comparison
to the mass-produced dreck that Hollywood churns out as horror.
Not only is Headspace a monster movie where the monsters have bit
parts, and a star-filled film where the stars are completely
unimportant, but it features grungy and nerdy characters in major
roles. Neither chess boy nor slacker boy have any sex appeal, and
many of their acquaintances consists of homeless derelicts and
street waifs who are portrayed as interesting, complex people.
This is not your father's horror movie, and it's not WB's either.
The film even includes a damned hot sex scene, and the director
filmed an even longer, hotter one which appears in the deleted
scenes.

As far as I can see, the
creative team made only one important mistake. They actually
showed the monsters from another dimension in clear and lingering
views in good lighting. Bad choice. There has never been a good
visual representation of a Lovecraftian monster, because they are
more frightening on the written page, and therefore in our heads,
than they are on the screen. The director really had this going in
the right direction for a long time. Instead of showing the chess
guy's most horrifying paintings, he would only show the reactions
of someone looking at them. Instead of showing the monster eating
one guy's brain, he would show the scene from the P.O.V. of
someone peeking around the corner, able to see only the victim's
twitching feet. (In fact I do not know that the monster was eating
the brain. That was just what I imagined.) That kind of suggestive
technique is exactly how the film should have proceeded. After
all, the story is not really about the monsters, despite my
kidding above, but about the madness and fear those monsters
induce in the humans who sense their presence. Unfortunately, the
filmmakers felt that they eventually had to represent the monsters
physically, and that was a mistake..

They look pretty much like a morph between the Creature from the Black
Lagoon and James Carville (right). Scarier than the creature, but not
as scary as Carville.

Despite that quibble, it's a solid little movie for genre
fans, and not too gory to turn off curious mainstream viewers.

The DVD is better than
solid. It is absolutely excellent - a
major DVD for a minor film. It has a "making of" documentary which
is 26 minutes long, a special on make-up, a featurette about
bringing the creatures to life, eighteen deleted or alternate
scenes comprising forty minutes of additional footage, two
full-length commentary tracks, a score-only track, and several
other minor features.

DVD INFO

widescreen anamorphic transfer

MANY
features, See the last paragraph above

NUDITY REPORT

As an artist's model, Tatiana
Vidus shows her breasts

Pollyanna McIntosh
shows her bum and her large breasts in a sex scene and in some
assorted quick flashes. A longer, clearer version of the sex
scene is in the deleted scenes.

The
Critics Vote ...

No scores, but Hollywood Reporter and The New
York Times both reviewed the film.

The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics,
or a C- from our system.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

Our own
guideline:

A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.

B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better
is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at
least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial
success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with
good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the
critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also
assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed film which did not do well at the
box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of
the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people
had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)

C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of
movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are
indistinguishable to you.

C
means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who
like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others
probably will not.

C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film
rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of
film, but films with this rating should be approached with
caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent
or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C-
and an E are indistinguishable to you.

D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. We don't score films below C- that
often, because we like movies and we think that most of them
have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that,
you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-.
Films rated below C- generally have both bad reviews and poor
popular acceptance.

E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre.

F means that the film is not only unappealing
across-the-board, but technically inept as well.